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A Movie A Week: HUSH… HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE (1964)Murder starts in the heart and its first weapon is a vicious tongue
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with the next installment of A Movie A Week.
[For those who new to the column, A Movie A Week is just that, a dedicated way for me explore vintage cinema every week. I’ll review a movie every Monday and each one will be connected to the one before it via a common thread, either an actor, director, writer, producer or some other crew member. Each film, pulled from my DVD shelf or recorded on the home DVR (I heart TCM) will be one I haven’t seen.]
Today we look at 1964’s HUSH… HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE, following Bette Davis over from last week’s PHONE CALL FROM A STRANGER.
HUSH… HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE is a fascinating movie from a horror geek’s perspective. You have a real director (Robert Aldrich) and real, classic Hollywood stars in a well-budgeted studio film… all for a story that’s essentially out of an EC comic.
It was also made in the wake of Herschell Gordon Lewis’s BLOOD FEAST and is probably the earliest studio film I can think of that had such a high amount of gore in it.
In the opening minutes we see Bruce Dern get his hand chopped off (graphically) and his bleeding stump and then a more implied, but still extreme beheading. Later on in the film we seem these removed items return to haunt sweet Charlotte (Davis).
Now we never see the killer, which is the big clue in that our poor, demented lead (Davis) might not be responsible. We know that as a young girl she was having an affair with the married Dern and her wealthy, stern and fat father opens the movie intimidating the poor fella.
It works and Dern breaks off his plans to runaway with Charlotte at a party. She doesn’t take it too well and suddenly Dern loses his hand and head. Charlotte shows up in the main hall with blood on her dress and in complete shock. Naturally everyone thinks it was her doing. We find out later that her wealthy father pulled every string he could to keep her out of jail and out of a mental institution.
But even with that support he thought his daughter guilty.
When we first truly meet Charlotte as played by Bette Davis, she scares the shit out of a little boy who was dared to enter her house and bring back something the old crazy lady who lives there has touched. She’s asleep, unseen, on a chair in the living room and wakes when the poor bastard opens a music box.
Charlotte is confused, haunted, but not necessarily the evil witch the kids were whispering about.
Davis plays the role on the brink of insanity. Depending on what the situation calls for she can take a step firmly on one side or the other, but that only serves to fill the creepy atmosphere surrounding this old plantation house. You can’t quite tell if she’s gone or not and you can’t figure out the motives of those surrounding her.
For instance, her maid and only source of regular human contact is named Velma and is played by Agnes Moorehead who achieved immortality for my generation with the constant Nick at Nite repeats of Bewitched. You don’t know which side Velma falls on.
Shit starts happening upon the arrival of Charlotte’s cousin (Olivia de Havilland, still looking hot some three decades after THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD) and you can’t really tell if Velma is trying to protect her mistress or is being secretive to hide something more insidious.
And boy does Olivia de Havilland really play this part up for all it’s worth. Considering this is a 45 year old movie I’m not too worried about getting into spoiler territory, but if you’re reading along and haven’t seen his one yet I’m going to get into some plot stuff, including the “twist.”
Have you seen GASLIGHT, the awesome thriller starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer (and, coincidentally Joseph Cotten, who also appears in Hush Hush)? If you have then you know what you’re in for here.
When Charlotte starts seeing strange things… like a butcher’s knife embedded in her wooden floor next to severed hand, for instance… well, you get the feeling someone is screwing with her, trying to drive her mad.
That’s also the reason I brought up EC comics… Tales From the Crypt, Vault of Horror, etc. had similar stories of human horror and insanity. Especially the last 30 minutes of the movie, when we find out that the culprits are de Havilland and Cotten, feels like it comes out of the deranged brain of William Gaines.
There’s an incredibly creepy look inside Charlotte’s head as she’s manipulated into thinking she’s being haunted by her murdered love. We see a party from her point of view, in fact a bizarro-world version of the party from the beginning of the movie except now instead of good looking rich people dancing on a sharp contrast black and white dance floor it’s a dream-haze vision of horror, the dancers wearing blank face masks that made me instantly mutter “Fuck that!” at my TV (much like I did upon my viewing of Bava’s BLACK SABBATH).
In this vision she appears to shoot the spectre of Bruce Dern and instead shoots Joseph Cotten. Of course, that’s just a final piece to their puzzle as Cotten comes walking back looking like a zombie and causing one of the most authentic, animalistic mental breaks I’ve ever seen on film. The wailing sound Davis makes as she crawls backwards down the staircase away from the (apparently) undead Cotten made my skin crawl. Davis kills that scene.
Like I said at the introduction, this is a fascinating movie from a genre perspective. It’s classy in execution and talent, but its underpinnings are undoubtedly the schlocky, pulp horror yarns of the previous decade and the fact that it’s so gruesome really took me by surprise.
After finishing the movie I flipped through some of the extras and to my great surprise found a fascinating documentary that informed me that the movie I just saw was far from intended. Olivia de Havilland I thought was made for her role, bringing so much sinister charm to the character that I couldn’t imagine she wasn’t the filmmaker’s first choice.
Turns out hot off the successful pairing of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? the studio was eager to put the two together for another thriller, directed by Aldrich. To say there was a rivalry between the two is an understatement and the documentary reveals just how far a scorned Bette Davis will go to knock Joan Crawford down a few pegs.
Crawford shot quite a bit and many stills of her at work are shown in the doc. She ultimately left because of health reasons, but it’s pretty clear from the interviews with those involved that was pretty much bullshit. But I think they dodged the bullet. de Havilland is marvelous in the movie and works on a completely different level than Crawford, who could have sold the intimidating manipulator side of the character well, but probably not the innocent front that the evil hides behind.
The fact that I had no earthly idea there was a major mid-production change-up and a ton of reshoots is a real testament to the talents of Robert Aldrich who is probably most famous for directing THE DIRTY DOZEN, which is great… but my personal favorite (so far) is the kick-ass underseen ‘70s showcase of machismo called EMPEROR OF THE NORTH POLE starring the great Ernest Borgnine as an evil train conductor and Lee Marvin as a heroic hobo.
Final Thoughts: This movie impressed the hell out of me. Davis gives a career great central performance, de Havilland proves she could play a Wicked Witch just as well as she could have played a Snow White and Joseph Cotten seems to be having the time of his life. Aldrich is in top form, the cinematography by Joseph F. Biroc (BLAZING SADDLES, VIVA LAS VEGAS and Don Coscarelli’s AMAD contribution THE TWONKY) is gorgeous and the overall tone is so unique that I can’t help but have a huge grin on my face as the film played. Also keep a look out for a great turn from silent and golden age film star Mary Astor in her final film role.
Upcoming A Movie A Week Titles:
Monday, May 18th: TOO LATE THE HERO (1970)
Monday, May 25th: THE BEST MAN (1964)
Monday, June 1st: THE CATERED AFFAIR (1956)
Monday, June 8th: THE QUIET MAN (1952)
The Quiet Man is a biggie. Very much looking forward to it. Right now the only context I have for it is the bit that ET watches as he gets drunk in front of the boob tube.
Next week we follow Robert Aldrich over to the 1970 war flick TOO LATE THE HERO starring Michael Caine and Cliff Robertson. Can’t wait for that one! See you folks then!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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Previous AMAWs:
April 27th: How To Marry a Millionaire
May 4th: Phone Call From A Stranger
Click here for the full 215 movie run of A Movie A Day!
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This is the second time you've misspelled Joseph Cotten's name several times throughout a review. You gotta work on that.
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Aldrich movie? Have you seen KISS ME DEADLY (both endings intact?); best film noir ever! Meeker's "Mike Hammer" is a kissin' cousin to Ian Fleming's 007 (his gleeful sadism, laughing as he crushes a larcenous doctor's hand in a desk drawer; then again, Hammer makes Bond look like a choirboy). CHARLOTTE is a hoot (I suspect that Joe Cotten imbibed lotsa Mint Julips between takes). Nice to see Aldrich's choice of vet character actors, e.g. Cecil Kellaway and William Campbell (notice that Campbell's sleazy tab reporter is homage to Mike Hammer?).
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If you haven't seen this film, watch it. Personally, I think this makes a great double feature along with WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? This post had many films mentioned that are just fantastic, EMPEROR OF THE NORTH POLE is fn' kick ass! Any movie where Ernest Borgnine & Lee Marvin fight with axes & chains on top of a speeding train HAS to be cool.
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But I loved that whole opening sequence. It's like, what, fifteen minutes before the credits start? I don't think I've ever seen that in a movie this old.
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Is a great film thegreatwhatzit. No shame in Quint liking that film. Personally, my favorite is The Longest Yard (no his best, but my favorite). But, yes, Kiss Me Deadly is a great film too.
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When Bette Davis heard that Joan Crawford had died, she said "I was always taught to speak good of the dead. Joan Crawford is dead - good."
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Is indeed great and I wouldn't argue that it's better filmmaking, but like Continentalop's preference for The Longest Yard... Emperor of the North Pole just presses all the right buttons for me.Many apologies for calling Mr. Cotten Cotton. I'll probably never remember to go with the e instead of the o.
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you had this moive, Last Man on Earth (still the best iteration of the story), Thrill Killers, and the mastepriece The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies!!?
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Chut...chut..chere Charlotte. Nice.
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You had to bring up The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies!!? Just when you think you'll never have that pop back in your head, someone has to name drop it. Well two can play that game. From 1975, I give you Thundercrack! (You know a movie is awesome if it has an exclamation point in the title).
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No…No…no…I saw it projected back in the 80's. Continentalop, you just brought me back to a place that is…My god.I'll see you and raise …"The Beast" by Walerian Borowczyk. Uncut.
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Scared the hell out of me when I was a kid. I remember my mom watching it on tv and when Dern got axed it drove me out of the room.
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you haven't seen THE QUIET MAN, it was, in my dad's eyes, one of my film rite of passages. Every year on St. Patrick's Day it's usually one TNT, or TCM, or AMC or TBS or something and we sit down and watch it. It's my 2nd fav Wayne movie (after previous AMAD EL DORADO). great flick you're in for a treatHUSH HUSH, like caruso, I don't think I've ever seen the whole thing of, but just sounds great from beginning to end
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I saw the headline on the front page and thought, nah. Then, bored, a little later, I clicked the link and started reading. Now, I'm heading over to Amazon. Keep up the good work Quint!
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You got me to sign up just to tell you off for the hideous spelling.
well done. -
May 12, 2009 7:57:10 AM CDT
Quint....since you're watching Robert Aldrich films....
by damned if i can login
Check out "Attack!", a WWII story with Jack Palance, Eddie Albert, Lee Marvin, and Buddy Ebson. Talk about gritty and intense...holy frag, this is a gripping film.Eddie Albert sends Jack Palance and his unit into a town that is heavily occupied by Nazi forces, and then in a wave of extreme cowardice he abandons them for dead with no reinforcements. Let's just say that this gets Jack Palance *pissed*.Man, Eddie Albert can play the simpering milksop like no one else. Jack Palance plays himself...and he ain't doin' it for laughs.Very realistic with none of the hollywood hero type schlock...just a buncha guys trying to make it out alive....and one guy wanting to get even.
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Aldrich and Jimmy Stewart. Desert vistas and some nice work all around.
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I really liked "Flight of the Phoenix." The original puts the crappy remake to shame. Jimmy Stewart pulling off the impossible. How can you not enjoy that?
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I just couldn't do it. The original is such a well crafted movie. Really strong, emotional moments. And, Jimmy Stewart puts in one hell of a performance.Plus it's in Cinemascope!I also love "Kiss Me Deadly," that film is just psychotic! Almost in the realm of Sam Fuller craziness.
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The final revelation of the real
killer...brilliant and so deeply
ironic, given what transpires through the movie...
Another plus: Aldrich had a great gift for casting and directing supporting actors and this is one of his best in that regard....William Campbell as the
sleazy reporter, the ever-gentle,
beloved Cecil Kelloway, tons-o-fun
Victor Buono as Charlotte's father in the opening flashback.
And the finale "coda" in this movie almost rivals "Sunset Boulevard" in its mixture of closure, bitter irony and profound
melencholy. -
Man, I never saw "The Beast", but if it is by Walerian Borowczyk, the man who directed Emmanuelle 5, I can only imagine myself lucky.
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Great war movie. And the insane part is that the guy who plays a coward, Eddie Albert, was a real life war hero at Tarawa.
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This movie creeped me the fuck out when I saw it because I have EMPATHY. If you have empathy and can imagine what Charlotte is going through, well then you know how Otto felt at the end of a Fish Called Wanda (minus the getting up and clinging to the wing of a plane).
There is nothing, not one thing, better than catching an old movie, preferably in black & white, and getting schooled in terror and suspense.
Night of the Demon did that for me. Holy shit is that movie scary.
Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte works in the same way, because you don't expect its awesomeness to be so intensely awesome. -
He could do just about any genre and do it damn well. It's a travesty that he gets little to no attention these days, whereas back in his heyday he was considered one of the most boundary-pushing, "dangerous" directors working. Hell, Kiss Me Deadly was not only a great fucking movie, it was chosen by one 1950s tightass group as the #1 most subversive threat to America's youth that year.
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and bleak. That is a must see for people who like their Noir super dark, with no hope for redemption.
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Excellent story. I was trying to do 2 things at once while this movie started, after 5 minutes, my "work" was put aside and I was engrossed by this film.
On another note: Emperor of the North was one of the best train movies ever made. Borgnine was awesome, and Marvin using the chicken as a weapon was phenomenal -
The plantation is still around - has a web site. Of course, OdH never filmed there...by the time she joined the production, they had recreated the house on a sound stage. A few long-distance shots are actually Crawford.
The title song is fantastic, and I actually have the CD of Davis's only non-Broadway album, in which SHE sings it. "Miss Bette Davis" is the album title. WHEN they do remake this, it will be a no-brainer to use that recording - if they can get it. -
"Public relations?? Sounds like somethin' pretty dirty, to me!" I love to screech at friends, "What do you think ah asked you here for? COMPANY????!!!!!!!"
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I also think that Aldrich has been (very seriously) underestimated. THE LONGEST YARD is iconic, perhaps the best film of the 70s (that indelible, concluding image of Burt Reynolds and his elderly mentor voluntarily retreating to the prison [cutaway to Eddie Albert resigning himself to a certain forfeiture of authority and respect]. Compare to the fade-out image of the crummy remake: Tracy Morgan in drag. Why the hell did Reynolds conceded to be cast in a travesty of his own classic?). I have no doubt about the merits of EMPEROR; it's just that KISS ME DEADLY still kicks me in the ass. When I intially viewed the "alternate ending" on AMC--totally unprepared--I literally fell out of my chair. God, the film must have provoked one hell of a scandal during its original release (Cloris Leachman's off-screen agony is more disturbing than the carte blanche schlock, tossed like around like a rabid ape, in trash like HOSTEL). And, I admit it, I have a soft spot for THE DIRTY DOZEN (I only regret the personalities of the central players--exempting Telly Savalas--eroded during the final act. But all of the viscera notwithstanding, you gotta love the bonding (Clint Walker: "You're pretty good with the little fella. Ya want to try that on me?"). I sincerely hope that Aldrich earns the respect that he richly deserves.
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is near flawless, disputably the best horror film ever made. The script is thoroughly literate; the hero is smug and the villain (a Satanist saddled with an Oedipal complex) is ALMOST sympathetic. The modern Horror Cinema has forfeited the shadows and opted for non-negotiable slash n' trash; dialogue isn't necessary.
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WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SWEET CHARLOTTE? if Crawford had stayed with the movie -- at least, that's what I've heard. HH,SC scared the shit out of me as a kid. For years to come I could never walk around a darkened house without expecting to see a headless silhouette out the window. Love the cast of this movie - especially Cecil Kellaway. Between this, PORTRAIT OF JENNIE (also with Cotten) and BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS I was a Kellaway fan for life. I remember a 45rpm record of the HUSH HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE theme by Patti Paige coming out after the movie. (And THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX is Aldrich at his best!)
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The routine ending (surfacing on TV for decades): it's really ambiguous whether or not that Mike and Velda survive the inferno (i.e. the atomic "genie" that has been extricated from Pandora's Box, aka "the great whatzit"). Bottom line: we never see them depart the oceanside house (the entire home is ablaze before an even more fatal explosion will likely sink LA). The uncut ending, however, offers some clarity: Mike and Velda exit the house and retreat to the ocean (another dawn of man, a regression to the "beginning"?). Will either of them survive the certain, more apocalyptic blast? They watch the detonation but how about the consequences of radiation? It's a very uncompromising climax. Further details are chronicled on http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048261/alternateversions
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Ulzanna's Raid is a damn good movie. Good call.
I always thought that and Chato's land would make a great double bill (West as Viet Nam). -
SPOILERS (Quint, look away). Yeah, nearly flawless movie save for the fact the producers felt the need to show the demon. I don't mind them showing it at the end of the movie, but at the beginning nearly undermines what Jacques Tourneur was going for. In fact, I wish they never did show the demon, because then it would always be the question of "does magic exist or not?" which is what Tourneur had intended.
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-- for its history alone. BUT --
I saw it second-run at our dinkville showhouse in Pudville, Wisconsin, in 1965. Made a huge impression on my pre-adolescent self. Which is why I've seen it at least a half-dozen times since.
This is Gothic horror-mellerdrammer at its best. Every performance in it is slightly over-the-top, even that great Virginia gentleman, Joe Cotten -- except, of course, the incomparable Agnes Moorehead, who is WAY over-the-top, which is what her role called for and what she delivered. The consummate pro.
It's a potboiler, but WHAT a potboiler. It's B-stuff given A-treatment, and it has never been done more beautifully. Aldrich made many fine films, but this one, "Kiss Me Deadly," and "Baby Jane" are all on a par -- his best.
All studies in mad decadence. Aldrich doesn't slip, from start to finish. The performances are all Gothic-perfect -- and I'll be the first to say that De Havilland was a GENIUS replacement for Crawford. She hams just enough, as Joan would not have DARED to do, and it is pitch-perfect.
Kudos to Mary Astor for playing a dying old woman when she was a dying old woman. That is fearless. That is acting. That is fiercely and poignantly professional.
A special film -- especially for film geeks.